Talk about health

Recently, a report published in one of the popular daily newspapaers in the UK discussed the problem of side effects of both prescription and counter medicines. There are probably equivalent reports emanating from the USA, Canada, Australia and the rest. What they amount to is a damning indictment of conventional medicine.

In England alone the report estimates 10,000 deaths every year from the side effects of widely used drugs. This figure has gone up over 150% in ten years. The cost to the health sevices is more than £466 million per year.

In anyone's language that amounts to a lot of money and enormous loss of life. The reasons given include the poor training of doctors, poor information presentation to patients, inappropriate medication prescribed with little instruction on spotting possible side effects and inadequate reporting of suspected problems.

Where does that leave us, the patients?

The first thing is that, at the very least, you have to be involved in the process a lot more. It's no good simply trotting off to the doctor with your symptoms and accepting everything you're told as being the one and only solution. You have to question the diagnosis and the proposed treatment. Ask about effects and importantly, the side effects you can reasonably expect.

Discuss the dosage - is it the lowest it hes to be for action or is the doctor using some arbitrary average. Are there any alternatives such as herbal and homeopathic remedies? Or maybe there's is a different approach to the problem using alternative therapies?

Since side effects are important (remember those deaths!) ask where you can find the relevant information. The data sheet handed out in the packaging should tell all. But can you read and understand it all. Many people cannot read the small print, and it could make the difference between life and death. It is very important.

Following from that, you need to be aware of how your symptoms change with the medication. It's no good taking the tablets faithfully and ignoring that you feel worse than you did before or you've developed a whole new set of symptoms different from the ones you had at the start.

So, having accepted your doctor's take on your condition and his prescription for recovery, you really must look at how your body and mind react to it all. Question it if your blood pressure goes down but you develop a dry cough instead. Ask why it is that your muscle pain has gone away, but your stomach is causing you pain instead. Request an opinion as to why your heart is skipping beats after having taken your blood pressure medication without problems for ten years.

The whole thing revolves around both you and your doctor. If you don't keep in touch, he'll think everything is OK.

I'm a great believer in keeping a diary of how you feel mentally and physically as you diet, exercise, fight stress or take medications of any kind (including herbal and other alternative therapies). Then you'll see changes that shouldn't be there more clearly, and you can do something about it.

Use your health professionals to help you. Talk to your pharmacist, acupuncturist, masseur etc to get another opinion. Whatever you do, don't do nothing!

In this complex world we live in, you can't take medicines for granted as being safe for everyone at all times. You have to be involved in your own health. The thousands of deaths a year in England could well translate to millions of deaths worldwide. You don't want to become one of these when it can be avoided.

The report calims that doctors do not receive the correct training for proper use of modern drugs, but you can't do much about that. Nor can you influence the drug industry very easily.

The bottom line is that it is down to you. You have to decide what is right for you - Conventional medicine or complementary therapies or a combination of both. And in order to do that, you need a source of independent information to help you.

It will take some work on your part, but what would you rather do? Take a chance on your doctor calling it correctly? Hope fate is on your side?

I know what I want, but in the end it's up to you.

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I was thinking about why I veered towards alternative therapies and came up with this piece which tries to explain my thinking. I hope you like it.

It’s a breakthrough! Some scientific expert has created a drug to treat one of the silent killers of the modern age. Good news all round … or is it?

It’s probably more relevant to look at a word that isn’t there - cure. It struck me a few years ago that treat and cure were rather different. I hadn’t really thought very much about it. I spent many years of my life recommending and dispensing medicines that, in my innocence, I had taken for granted as a form of cure. My regular (ill?) customers returned on a routine cycle for their supplies.

Over the years I built up many happy relationships with people who were quite unwell but survived. Their condition was kept under control so they could live a reasonable life, assuming their drugs continued working and that the side effects could be kept in check.

The seemed happy enough and the fact they kept coming back showed the treatment worked. At the time I was keen they did come back because it was the foundation of my business, and I took it for granted that it was best for everyone concerned. The patient was being kept in reasonable health and I was scraping a living.

I was in the middle of it so didn’t take a step back to review exactly what was going on. In a ‘wood from the trees’ moment I happened to read a book on modern medicine. It discussed the breakthroughs in medicine over the 20th century, and pointed out the fact that few modern drugs cure anything. It is only the antibiotic that cured bacterial infections – and even that boast is losing out with the superbug problem.

From that beginning, it didn’t take much research to conclude that the author was right. Most of what I dispensed didn’t cure anything. Or even try to. The drugs had been developed by chance or design to control one specific aspect of some particular condition. Trials confirmed that they worked as expected for most people.

The patient appears at the surgery with symptoms of high cholesterol, raised blood pressure, diabetes, depression, osteoporosis or whatever. The doctor prescribes the latest (although not necessarily the best) drug treatment and everybody’s happy.

The doctor has used his expertise to diagnose and prescribe, the patient has his prescription, the pharmacist earns his fee and the system is satisfied – but crucially, nobody is cured. The sticking-plaster approach to health - cover it up and hope it goes away.

I have to agree that, from the patient’s perspective, being alive with a few tablets to take is infinitely better that being dead. And if I were in that situation, I confidently predict that I would rather take the tablets, too.

So, why am I banging on about it? I am not criticising drug research per se. There are millions of people around the world who are alive today purely resulting from it. My point is that I am disappointed the rest of us are quite happy with treatment rather than cure as an aim.

We take it for granted that treating the symptoms is the one and only option. We sit and wait and hope that the drug industry will come up with a new drug for every ill, eventually! It’s only a matter of time when those hard working, philanthropists at the multinational drug companies can tell us of their latest revelation and swell their coffers at the same time.

It’s bound to be hugely expensive and have a longer-than-ever list of side effects. But, it’s approval for use will open spell survival for another section of the population. Hoorah!

While you’re waiting for that day, don’t hold your breath and consider whether you really need to sit on your hands. There are other ways – the CAM ways (complementary and alternative medicine). It depends on what you perceive is the cause of disease.

Is it some external force that distributes illness like some health lottery? Meaning that whatever you, personally, do in life your health remains or deteriorates anyway. What will be will be. Drug treatment may keep you relatively well for the rest of your days, and who knows, one day there may be a cure. You might die before your time, but what the …

Or do you think your lifestyle choices have a bearing on your health? In which case, just by changing the way you live will change your health for good or ill.

And, if you do suffer some illness it isn’t inevitable that a cure is out of the question. Once more, drugs may treat you successfully, but there could be some alternative approach to lead you to a cure. Conventional holding treatment can buy you the time to investigate the options.

‘Body, mind and spirit’ is the new mantra. Just looking after the physical body is important, but it is also true that mind and spirit play vital roles in the overall health picture. To continue my random song lyrics – ‘You can’t have one without the other’.

I know which view I take. Get out of your rut and take a look at what is available.

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One of the problems with life is that everyone's an expert. In everything. It just takes two or more, gathered together for a casual drink or lunch or dinner. Someone only has to say what their current worry or concern is and the rest will spare no time in giving of their thoughts and opinions.

In fact, I was at dinner a couple of days ago and the conversation turned to cars. The immediate reaction was a veritable torrent of advice on which car was the best, which garage gave the ideal service and what finace offers were currently out there. The fact that none of those present had any particular knowledge or expertise of cars, garages and financing made no difference. They had some specific practical experience since they all had cars, bought and serviced.

I'm sure no one was intent on damaging reputations or any kind of malice, but it would have been difficult to ignore everything and strike out alone. The moral of this brief story is to get your advice from the appropriate expert and allow your friends and co-workers to add their opinions only to refine your decisions.

A case in point is that last week I wanted some help with a financial problem, so I called my financial advisor ( a helpful professional I have known and dealt with for some years) to get his opinion. He explained the options as he saw them; I thanked him for his time; then I discussed all of this with my wife. The upshot was that I didn't change my choice of action, but I felt more confident in it. After all, financial decisions can have a significant effect on your life.

So it is with health. Making the wrong choice can be serious, even fatal. So it isn't something to put entirely in the hands of your friends especially if they have no health-based qualifications. I hope it is becoming clear that my aim of telling you this is to encourage you to seek out opinions from the people in the health professiona that you trust to give you reasonable and largely unbiased opinions. From their words and advice, you have to be the final arbiter of the path you choose.

You can choose whoever you wish to furnish their opinions and I have no wish to stop you. But,if you would like my advice, let me tell you that I have spent a great deal of my life working in the health profession as a pharmacist in both hospital and retail sectors and have advised many thousands of people. I hope that my advice is unbiased and accurate and the options I give are reasonable, based on many years experience.

Since leaving pharmacy to begin this work, I have amassed many tens of books and I access many health newsletters and sites in an attempt to get as wide and up-to-date view as possible. No one is infallible and I can't give you cast iron help that always works.

The down side of any professional opinion is that it is you, the customer or patient, who has to make the final decision. Most professionals give you the options and let you decide. My financial advisor left me with the words, "That's all I can say, I'm not allowed to make the choice. Only you can do that."

With my advice, too, I can only give you some options. And no one can do more than that. Then it's over to you to make that choice, for better or worse. At least you'll have improved your chance of making the right choice having got some professional help along the way.

The moral is to seek out a trusted professional, get the options and the downsides explained so you understand as much as you need. Then go for it ...You can do no more than that.

If you agree with what I say, you can get information on my site at http://www.healthexplored.co.uk , subscribe to my F r ee newsletter, reply to this blog or get hold of my books and publications digitally through the secure order form on the site or get further detail at info@healthexplored.co.uk .

Should you have any health questions, please e-mail them to me and I shall do my best to help your decision making process.

Wishing you the very best of health.